Month: December 2024

Today we looked at dialogue editing in films. This is an important part of the post-production process which hones in on cleaning up all the sound issues from the set and smoothing out all the actor’s vocal performances. This must occur as smooth and articulate dialogue is one of the foundations of any movie and the first step that goes into a sound mix.

In class, we were tasked with editing 2 scenes from a short film. After loading in our aaf file from week two and lining up the timecodes, I organise all the tracks and audio clips by copying them into groups and subgroups, using the shortcut ctrl + option while dragging clips so that I am able to keep the original copies of the aaf that I can compare back to as well as retrieve a fresh unedited clip if I were to make a mistake. This shortcut also has the added benefit of locking the clips in place, so as I drag them to a new track the clips have no chance of going out of sync. This will be useful for me to organise and clean up my pro tools session, makinge my mixing process easier in the long run, especially since I’m working with a strict time constraint in each studio session. It will also make it a breeze to export separate audio stems since all the audio is organised into the correct subgroup.

Dialogue editing is not always an easy process, but it’s a crucial and necessary one. You will spend a great amount of time selecting the best microphone sources, smoothing background noise from cut to cut, and removing non-dialogue production sound effects for use on their own tracks. Empty spaces are filled with room tone, and unwanted sounds like heavy mouth clicks or noises that distract from the viewing experience are taken out.

Through research, I discovered a book to help guide my workflow. Titled “Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures: A Guide to the Invisible Art”, this book by John Purcell provides a detailed breakdown of the dialogue editing process. Starting the preparation for the edit to finalising dialogue tracks. The book has helped me understand not only the “how” but also the “why” behind each step in the editing process.

For example in this passage he discusses shot balancing, which is a key aspect of dialogue editing that ensures the dialogue sounds consistent, even when recorded in different environments or conditions. The focus on creating a “living scene” reinforces the idea that dialogue editing is as much about storytelling as it is about technical precision. Effective shot balancing removes the “mechanics of filmmaking” to immerse the audience fully in the story. It highlights how editing choices influence the audience’s perception of the dialogue, ensuring it feels natural and contributes to the scene’s authenticity.

This is a piece of information I called back to numerous times while mixing my dialogue editing artefacts. I was able to use it as a guide for my editing process, since it was the first time I had taken on such a task, it was a key asset in giving me an initial image of what I had to do, bypassing my creative block and helping me to produce a believable dialogue edit mix.

Purcell, J. (2015). Dialogue editing for motion pictures: a guide to the invisible art. Focal Press.

‌Enhanced Media. (n.d.). What is dialogue editing and why is it important for your film? | Enhanced Media – Audio Post Production Company. [online] Available at: https://enhanced.media/blog/2021/10/6/what-is-dialogue-editing-and-why-is-it-important-for-your-film.

In this week of class, we looked at using props and materials to record foley. This is a vital step in the post-production process in which already recorded sounds are replaced and enhanced to underscore the visual effect or action on screen. An example of this is fist-fight scenes in action movies, which are usually staged by the stunt actors and therefore do not have the actual sounds of blows landing.

We used some objects to create foley for two separate clips. In the first clip, a man walks through a forest with a backpack. Each of us took turns recreating and adding sounds to the session, recording footsteps, fabric movements, shuffling of bags, etc using a shotgun mic to record each. We had to do this a couple of times to get each footstep and rustle in time with the video.

With the next clip however we were tasked with recreating an on screen zombie bite. We had to use creative sound substations or “foley artistry” to get the desired sound. Some of the things we used included, chewing chocolate for the initial bite, snapping celery to create the sounds of bones snapping and peeling oranges to emulate the tearing of flesh.

This is a technique that is vital for me to learn and experiment with. By doing this I am able to emphasise the emotion or tone of my project. For example, exaggerated or stylised sounds like the use of celery to emulate bones breaking are highly effective in creating a more dramatic experience as well as giving me the ability to manipulate the audio to suit the narrative and visuals of my projects. The piece of text below from the article “Sync Tanks: The Art and Technique of Postproduction Sound backs up my claim.”

In the article “Unpacking a Punch: Transduction and the Sound of Combat Foley in Fight Club” the author describes many methods of sound substitutions that they used to generate the punching sound effects for the film. These pieces of text pictured below show how they creatively use sound substitutions to emphasise the aggression in of each blow.

Foley isn’t just using objects to make sounds but also taking those sounds and editing them. In the second clip for example, to make the bite more convincing, the audio was pitched down an octave or so and some equalisation was added. Another thing we did was record “groaning” sounds and use a plugin called reformer (which we used in week 3 initially) to completely transform the vocalisations using the library of sound emulators.

Hagood, M. (2014). Unpacking a Punch: Transduction and the Sound of Combat Foley in Fight Club. Cinema Journal, 53(4), pp.98–120. doi:https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2014.0048.

Wels, E. (1995). Sync Tanks: The Art and Technique of Postproduction Sound. 21(1/2), pp.56–61.

This week of class, we were given two new short clips for which to design sound. A drone view of London and a short animation of an astronaut in space. with this, I was handed a H5 stereo field recorder and told to spend the next hour exploring Elephant and Castle gathering sounds.

Field recording is the action of capturing sounds and audio recordings in an open environment without the aid of studios. Recording in the “field” means to work outside with no walls or booths or control room filled with audio engineers and high tec computers. With field recording it is all about capturing audio straight from the source.

What’s great about the H5 recorder is the X/Y stereo mic pattern. The X/Y pattern is the most commonly used stereo technique. It is used to mimic the way our ears work (binaural), relying on the time delay of a sound that arrives at one microphone compared to another which means it is able to provide a deep sense of ambience.

Before I went out to record sounds I watched the clip through a couple of times while down important ‘hit points’ (you might call it) to collect sounds for. By doing this, I could record everything I needed without having to go back out and record more, saving myself lots of time and energy. For example, there was lots of visible traffic going from left to right in the clip, so I parked myself in front of a busy street and

Since it was my first time using a field mic there was a slight learning curve. I learnt this the hard way with a bunch of my first recordings being completely unusable since I hadn’t gain staged the microphone correctly. Another thing I figured out was the mic was very directional and that I had to point at exactly what I wanted to hear or else it wouldn’t be picked up. I had to be careful not to use too much gain as the field recorder could capture sounds from extremely far that could bleed into the audio. Luckily for me the clip I was given benefitted from this with the ambience I recorded capturing all the minor details of what you hear walking through the streets of London.

For the astronaut clip, there were some sounds I wanted to add that would have been almost impossible to recreate myself so I utilised an application I found called Soundly, which gave me the ability to download ready-made sound effects in an instant. This will be useful for me down the line when I’m struggling to get the right tone for a piece of foley.

I came back and loaded everything I recorded into Ableton and spent the next hour or so lining up all of the usable audio clips and panning them to create my sound design piece. When it came to exporting the files I ran into a challenging issue involving the coding of the video clip, so after troubleshooting with no success, I had to use another application to export it. Diego recommended I try Davinci Resolve, so I installed it and roughly figured out how to use it so that I could successfully export my project.

Field (2020). Acoustic Nature. [online] Acoustic Nature. Available at: https://acousticnature.com/journal/what-is-field-recording?srsltid=AfmBOoq395ccrC8F388oEC9qxpQKd1mXQxwSvVl7fpSBgrzOjryq3aV0 [Accessed 2 Dec. 2024].

‌Www.sfu.ca. (2020). Field Recording. [online] Available at: https://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio-webdav/cmns/Handbook%20Tutorial/FieldRecording.html.

In this first artefact workshop, we were tasked with providing sound for two clips. We had to take these short animations and bring them to life using different sound editing, layering, and synthesis techniques that we were taught in class. This was a great opportunity for me to expand my knowledge of sound design and prepare for the final project submission.

The first clip I was tasked with completing was for a user interface loading screen. I had to create all the sound design for this using nothing but sound synthesis. SInce I had experimented already experimented heavily with synthesis in my first year projects, this was a breeze for me. I was able to use 3 different synths to create swirling pads and rumbling bass motifs that lined up with the movement of the animation – Operator, wavetable and analogue, each of which producing a unique layer to add to the overall sound.

For the basis of the artefact I used 2 different sounds of an analogue synth to provide an underlying drone layer. I used an analogue synth for this because of the warm tone it produced. It was also easier to use to produce a full sounding pad in comparison to the other synths which was a welcome bonus. I also used it to create a thumping bass which lined up with the outbursting arrows in the animation. This added character to the video, providing a sense of movement in the image.

I used an arpeggiator accompanied with the operator synth to animate the lightbulb forming. I wanted to create a sound that emulated the movement of the small pieces forming together and the fast arpeggiator was useful to create that sound. I used the operator synth to get a clean thin tone to match the material of the glass lightbulb. Something that the analogue synth might have struggled to replicate.

In the next clip, I was given a choice between three different character animations to bring to life through sound design. I chose the steampunk robot. In this clip, we see a robot walking on what seems to be a metallic surface (perhaps a submarine exterior?) on the ocean floor.

To obtain some of the sounds for the robots’ vocalisations and movements, I used a plugin called Reformer. This plugin allows you to perform pre-recorded audio with a microphone to style, shape, and match your behaviour to what is happening on screen. It uses an algorithm to choose splices of clips to best suit your performance, with several sound libraries to choose from.

I used the electric setting to emulate the sparks on the inside of the robots head. This is something that would be fairly difficult for my to replicate myself or find in a sound library so by using the reformer plugin I am able to create and design sounds to fit my narrative. By doing this I am essentially able to save vasts amounts of time and stress if I were to try record them myself.

You can see a perfect example of reformer being used by sound designer Tsvi Sherman in the youtube video linked below. In the video he is able to use the plugin to design foley using his vocal input to sculpt the dynamics of a scene from the video game ‘Witcher 3’. As you can see, the plugin is simple, effective and very quick to use.

Sometimes to create a sound instead of recording the desired object for the action you want, it is more beneficial to layer multiple different sounds on top of one another to create a more dramatic effect. Usually for something like film or tv, the authentic sound can be percieved as dull or uneventful. This is where layering comes in handy to create more dynamics and add depth to the foley.

A great example of this is in the film ‘Jurassic Park’. In the sound design commentary for the film, the sound designer Gary Rydstrom analyses all of the layers that went in to designing the sound of the T-Rex. Showing us the first on-screen appearance of the dinosaur in the film, he explains how they used the sounds from all sorts of animals including a lion, whale, and most importantly a baby elephant. All of these sounds were combined to create the magnificent roar you hear from the dinosaur, giving an already intense scene a terrifying edge.

As I mentioned earlier with authentic sounds sometimes being perceived as dull or boring, Gary explains in the video that if they were to design the sound of a T-Rex the way it would have sounded realistically, the only noises the T-Rex would make would be the “gurgling of its stomach”, leading to a much less intense moment in the film. Which is why occasionally you have to over-emphasise certain aspects of the sound design to really bring out a reaction in the viewers. You can see this video linked below.